Renaissance

Renaissance (May 29, 1453)

Renaissance is a French word which means rebirth or revival.  In literature the term “Renaissance” is used to denote the revival of ancient, classical Latin literature and culture and reawakening human mind, after the long sleep in the Middle Ages, to the glory, wonders and beauty of men’s earthly life and nature. In the opinion of Lamartine “the Renaissance is man’s discovery of himself and the universe.” Taine opines that “with the Renaissance man so long blinded, suddenly opened his eyes and saw.”

“Rebirth” or “New Learning” or as Andrew Sanders calls “Renaissance is the feeling for virtu, the fascination with what man can achieve along a single line of endeavor if he sets his mind and heart to it with sufficient fervor and lyricism enthusiasm; the interest in pride, in lust for power, in man as the master of his own destiny, challenging and vying with the gods—

“How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties!      
In form and moving how expresses and admirable!  
In action how like and angel! An apprehension how like a god!”     

and imagining that by an effort of the will he can control Fortune’s Wheel—all these are in the plays of Tudor Dynasty. Dunton calls it “Renaissance of Wonder.” Geography, History and Romance come together in the Renaissance with power effect.

It may not quite tell us "how the Renaissance began?" The story begins at a monastery in central Germany – almost certainly the Benedictine abbey of Fulda. At its gates, in the first weeks of 1417, arrived an itinerant Florentine scholar by the name of Poggio Bracciolini. A slight, genial man in his mid-30s, he had served as a papal secretary but was currently unemployed owing to the deposition of Pope John XXIII. Today Poggio is best remembered for his vituperative controversy with Lorenzo Valla (a “war of wits” much savoured by Elizabethan comic writers such as Thomas Nashe). 

The Renaissance originated in Italy, and dates back to the Turkish Conquest Constantinople on May 29, 1453. Most of the Greek Scholars, fled for safety, come to Italy and started their studies of afresh. This is known as “New Learning” or “Renaissance. The movement spread to other European countries. England come came under the impact of Renaissance and a number of scholars held their own during the reign of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Important writers of the Renaissance were John Colet, More and Erasmus. The Renaissance movement broadened the outlook of the people and gave impetus to education. “The Renaissance was an era of striking accomplishment in painting, sculpture, music, architecture, literature, science, philosophy and technology,” Remarks Abrams. It was an age of change in the economic foundations and in the basic structure of European society and in the organization of states. And last bit not the least, the Renaissance affected to Christian church which for generation had pre-sided at the formation of civilization.

Difference Between Renaissance & Humanism
The term “Renaissance” and humanism which are often applied to the same movement have properly narrower significance. The term “Renaissance” though used by many writers to denote the whose transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World, is more correctly applied to the Revival of Art resulting from the discovery and imitation of classic models in the 14th and 15th c. Humanism applied to the Revival of Classical literature, and was so called b its leaders, following the example Petrarch, because they held that the study of the classic “Litrae Humaniore” that is more human writings rather than the old theology was the best means of promoting the largest human interest. It was in the 16th century the word “Humanist” was going to signify one taught and worked in the “studia Humanitiates” that is grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy.; and distinguished form fields less concerned with the moral and imaginative aspects and activities of man, such as mathematics, natural philosophy and theology. Scholarly, humanists devoted themselves to the rediscovery and intense study of first roman and then Greek literature and culture, in particular the works of Cicero, Aristotle and Plato. Humanists recovered edited, and expounded many ancient texts in Latin and Greeks and so contributed greatly to the store of materials and idea of the European Renaissance. Out of this, intellectual ferment there emerged a view of man and a philosophy quite different from medieval scholasticism in 19th c. this strand of Renaissance through was labeled humanism. Reason, balance and a proper dignity for man were the central ideals of humanists thought. Many humanists also stressed the need for a rounded development of men’s diverse powers, physical and mental, artistic and moral as opposed to merely technical or specialized training. Matthew Arnold opponent of humanism in the Victorian Period strongly defended the predominance of human studies in general education.


Famous Writers of Renaissance

• Spenser